Christmas in Cedar

Sense we are going to Delta for Christmas morning
we thought we would have our own little Christmas morning here in Cedar. That just meant that we needed to do it a little early. So Wednesday was our little family Christmas Day! Emery loved it. She loved all the paper, bags and boxes. Santa even knew to fill our stockings early too. How does he know? :) We each got a little present and a treat in our stockings. Tim got a sling shot and a Symphany bar. I got a movie and some truffles and Emery got a sippy cup and two jars a fruit (she has not tried fruit yet). I thought Emery's stocking was quite clever. :) We also opened a new pan, new dish rags (both badly needed and Tim's idea) and a Movie (Joe vs. the Vol canoe). We then used our new pan to make Christmas omelets and then watched our new movie. Later that day we made and delivered Christmas treats to friends. It was the perfect Christmas Day. We could have been on a movie or something! Hee, Hee.

Christmas with the Hills

Christmas parties are always the greatest. We spent last weekend with my side of the family. We had a true

blue white elephant gift exchange and I'll have to say that it was one of the funnest Christmas gift exchanges I have ever done. I don't know if I have laughed as hard as I did for a long time. There were some great gifts and we learned some great things as well. My parents had a full house (my favorite way to have it). It started off with a fantastic turkey dinner. We then let the kids open their gifts (while Erin, my sister, serenaded us with Christmas music) and then sent them downstairs while the adults did our white elephant gift exchange. We then finished off the night with hot cocoa and mint ice cream, the perfect ending for a perfect party. I ended up with a snowflake kit full of a table cloth, dish towels, soap dispenser, table runner and more, which I was quite pleased with (just goes to show that someones junk is someone elses treasure). Tim ended up with a box of 22 shells (he couldn't be happier). We were lucky to come out of it with great gifts. It was so wonderful to have my whole family there and we look forward to seeing more family in the next few days! Holidays Rock!

Standing up

Emery is growing up before my eyes. Lately she has been getting bored with sitting on the ground and playing with her toys. I can sense that she is ready to learn something new but she will have nothing to do with being on her stomach or crawling. All she wants to do is stand up all the time. I am such a crawling fan because I know how important it is for development and reading in the future, so I was a little worried. I decided that it will be all right because I guess they say swimming can do the same thing for them. I guess we will just have to take her swimming all the time. Once I realized that, I was not too concerned and decided she can stand up and walk all she wants. I even have been putting her in a walker, which I never thought I would do. It is funny all the things I do with a baby that I said, or thought, I would never do. I hear that is common though. :) The joys of being a parent. I love being a mom so much and would not change it for the world

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas

As soon as we got home from our Thanksgiving break we started putting up our Christmas decorations. As you can see Emery sure enjoyed being involved. I'm not sure if I had more fun decorating the tree or decorating Emery/having her play with the decorations. :) I didn't realized that the holidays could be so neat having your own kid to enjoy it. Christmas is in the air and all around and I LOVE IT!!!

Not only are Christmas decorations going up everywhere, but it also snowed. Saturday morning we woke up to snow all over everyging. Tim had to sweep our drive-way for the first time, and I think he really enjoyed doing it too because he swept all the way down the sidewalks past our house. He sure is a good worker. We were also pretty lucky to see Brett and Jennie last night because they were cutting down their Christmas tree. What a great time of year!

Light Parade

After having Thanksgiving in Manti we drove back to Delta to spend the rest of our Thanksgiving break. Boy did we ever have a busy weekend. We played games with grandma Bringhurst, went to Delta's festival of trees, the light parade, and then we went to see Enchanted (which I loved). I was able to get a few pictures of the light parade. On the weekend after Thanksgiving is over Delta puts on a light parade. It is basically a parade where all the floats are decorated in Christmas with Christmas lights. It is actually quite pretty. Emery really enjoyed it. I was trying to get pictures with her in front of the floats but I kept getting the back of her head because she was watching the lights and the floats. Guess I can't blame her. Hee, hee.

Thanksgiving Day

We had a great Thanksgiving this year! We went to Manti and Tims grandma made a very yummy dinner. They have a tradition of having shrimp cocktail first before the meal. It was a first for me and I quite liked it. It was really neat to see new traditions. Every family has there own special things, I am sure. My family always has a pomegranate salid (It is special to where they live because pomegranates grow all over). I really enjoyed getting to know that side of the family as well. They have the adults eat upstairs, and the kids eat down stairs. I aslo found that Emery fits
in really well on that side of the family. If you notice, the kid table is ALL GIRLS!!! I thought that was pretty funny. Emery sat in the closet during the meal and she seemed to really like that. She did so well through all the traveling and comotion.

Both Grandparents! (Lucky)

Emery is anxiously awaiting the exciting weekend to come!

The time finally arrived. Grandma and Grandpa Johnson got here on Friday morning. We were lucky enough to spend the whole day with them all by ourselves! Tim had to work and we got to stay home, play and get spoiled. Grandma and Grandpa gave Emery her first chocolate and boy did she ever love it (You can tell by the look on her face)! It will be interesting to see how she reacts when the package is open in the future and she can actually taste the chocolate! Tim and I were thrilled to have our first guest spend the night in our new home. I feel so blessed to have such great new parents. The next day we all woke up, drove to St. George and had breakfast with Brett and Jennie. It was great to see them as well. It would have been nice to spend more time with them but we were off to Logandale. I guess we just have to many good things going on!

We had another great time with family in Logandale. And once again Emery was spoiled. Grandma gave her, her first cookie (made by Erin). She love that as well. It was frozen so she just chewed, and chewed on it. Grandma also taught her how to play patty cake. It is now her favorite game and I love playing it with her. Emery also enjoyed sitting on grandpas lap. I noticed before we left that she was leaning against him with her back, resting her head on his shoulder and had her hand wrapped up around his neck. She never cuddles like that with us. Grandpa has always had a great touch with his little girls. I wish I had gotten a picture but I guess it is one of those that will be a picture in my mind.

We had a wonderful time and look forward to the Holidays when we can spend more time with family.

Autumn

Autumn is Tim's favorite time of year. I have to admit that I love it too. The weather is getting cooler but not too cold. We can still enjoy beging outside. There are beautiful colors everywhere and my favorite are the smells of fall, especially in Utah. We are starting to smell the wood stoves and the pumpkin things cooking in the oven. Every time a new season is starting I always tell Tim, "This is my favorite season!" He makes fun of me. I

think I just really love ALL the seasons. That is probably why I love living in Southern Utah so much. We get to experience the best of all the seasons.

I thought I should start writting some new types of things on my blog page because I guess I am doing this as a type of a journal too. Sometimes it is fun to write about things I am thinking about as well as what we are doing. Things are about normal for us right now. Tim is still working hard going to school and providing for us and I just finished another project (pictured above). As you can see Emery is as happy as can be. Tim and I have a lot to be thankful for.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

We had a wonderful Halloween this year (as you can probably tell from all the post I have done on this holiday). We were Hanzel, Gretel and the Witch this year. We always enjoy designing and making all of our costumes. I think we are going to have to start making them earlier next year though. I was sewing almost non stop for about three days before the costume party. I always love to sew, and Tim designed and sewed his own costume too!

Costume Buddies

Emery has a lot of friends already! We didn't get pictures of all of her friends that came to see her on halloween. We missed two others and the picture with Sadie was taken two weeks ago. It was so fun to see all these cute kids dressed up!

Fun Holiday!

This was of Halloween day. We made some yummy Jack-o-Lantern waffles this morning for breakfast (didn't get a picture) and some spider web tomatoe soup for lunch.
We also got a picture with Emery and her pumpkin. I think it might be bigger than her. What a fun Holiday!

Costume Party

Two nights ago we went to a dinner costume party. It was so much fun. I didn't get very good pictures probably because we were having so much fun. I will get some more pictures of our costumes tonight for when we dress up for halloween. Everyone dressed up so cute for the party. We also had stew that was made and baked in a pumpkin. It was a really cool idea. I think I took a picture of the stew to late though because it was almost all gone. Hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!

First Feeding

Last night we gave Emery some rice cereal for the first time. We could hardly believe how much she loved it. We got a video of it so we thought to share it with you. Hope you like it.

Deer Hunt Weekend

FRIDAY

Emery saw her first horses on Friday. Grandpa AJ is training some horses so we were able to go watch for awhile. The horses are still pretty scared and Grandpa said that they buck around some times while he is training them. They are getting better though and he is even able to put a sadle on them. Emery really seemed to love horses (Just like her mom and Grandpa).
SATURDAY


The hunt began. In the picture is the "big deer" they found. No deer this hunt but Nick saw a big one that was to close to shoot for his scope and Brett saw a small one. Emery also took her first bath in the kitchen sick and grandma and grandpas house. She LOVED it!! We will have to do baths like that more often.

SUNDAY

Yeah! Sadie came to grandma and grandpas on Sunday. Emery really liked seeing her. They also dressed up in their halloween costumes together. It was so cute and Emery just kept looking at Sadie. I think they will be great friends and cousins.